Field of the Invention
In a telecommunications system having subscriber access and connectionless network signalling, an interworking unit is proposed that facilitates the remote control of the access signalling. This is particularly suitable for information services which do not require a bearer connection. This concept is applicable to Intelligent Networks (IN), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), Broadband ISDN and to the emerging Telecommunications Information Network Architecture (TINA).
Currently telecommunications systems provide a mixture of switch-based services and Intelligent Network (IN) based services, where the IN based services are typified by the service delivered within the bearer connection, i.e. a bearer is always required in order to deliver an IN service, e.g. for voice applications. Switched-based services are constrained by their implementation and the host switching platforms capabilities but do exhibit characteristics of control over the access signalling and hence are capable of limited information carriage prior to bearer establishment. However, bearer establishment is always a pre-requisite for switched-based analogue access service information transfer. That is, the telecommunications system itself presents an obstacle to the remote control of access signalling. This restricts the usability of switch-based services.
For Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) accesses there exists the concept of the user-to-user information service which can be independent of the B-channel, i.e. via the D-channel. However, there are currently relatively few ISDN Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) existing, compared to analogue CPEs.
Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) have tackled the inflexibility of analogue CPEs by their proposed Advanced Call Management Services (ACMS) Analogue Display Services Interface (ADSI) protocol to improve the subscriber (user) interface.
In order to build on the flexibility that the IN concept provides for rapid service creation, service deployment and customisation of services it is proposed to extend IN control to cover all types of access signalling, i.e. to effectively remove the obstacle of inflexible local access control. The key benefit that this proposal provides is flexibility of control over the usability of services, i.e. the `look and feel` of the service becomes easy to customise. Control of access signalling can then be remote from the accesses, e.g. for IN the control could be centralised.